Books

When I wrote about Richard Cowper here a little while back, I was suddenly reminded of the “High Cs”, a name sometimes given to a small group of British sf writers of the 1960s and 70s whose names all began with C. They included Edmund Cooper and Michael Coney, but to my mind the best […]

The second half of our list of upcoming books this month includes some first rate names (Jeff Noon, Michael Swanwick) and some fascinating titles. A Man of Shadows by Jeff Noon Jeff Noon has been ploughing a very individual and distinctive furrow, every since his Clarke Award-winning debut, Vurt, and this new novel is no exception. […]

What! It’s August already? No, it can’t be. Oh well, that means another great selection of wonderful new science fiction due out any day now. I hope you’re keeping up there, because there are books here you’re really won’t want to miss. As ever, so this whole thing doesn’t become too overwhelming (for me as […]

So, the other day we told you about some of the books coming your way in July. But that wasn’t even half of the books we’ve got our eyes on for the hot summer month. So here are more books to look forward to. Arabella and the Battle of Venus by David D. Levine David […]

We’re coming up on the half way point of the year. Already? Where did it go? And there used to be a time when publishers drifted off to Mediterranean beaches or Tuscan villas around this time of year, so it was something of a fallow time for new books. Well, there were always plenty of […]

There was a habit that was popular with novelists for quite a long while, though you don’t see it very much these days: they would sign off the last page of the novel with the date and place they began and finished the writing. It was not a habit that Arthur C. Clarke followed much, […]

The other day we noted some of the mainstream writers who had been shortlisted for (or had even won) major science fiction awards. But the news that Naomi Alderman has won the Baileys Women’s Prize for The Power was a reminder that the traffic isn’t all one way. Admittedly, there are fewer sf novels being shortlisted […]

There’s an academic term: monograph. Basically it means a study of one particular subject. Where that subject is a science fiction writer, we’ve been pretty poorly served up to now. There have been occasional biographies, though these have usually been restricted to the very best known authors and haven’t always been that good. And let’s […]

Here we are, back again, with yet more of the books that will be published in June. The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2017 Edition edited by Rich Horton Yet another of our annual Best of the Year anthologies makes its appearance this month. This is the ninth year this series has been running, […]

It’s that time of the month already! Where does the time go? And here we are, with the first of two posts looking forward to the books coming out in June. The Year’s Best Military & Adventure SF, Volume 3 edited by David Afsharirad This annual anthology series continues with a collection of 15 tales […]

Reports of a strange, new habitable planet have reached the Twenty Planets of human civilization. When a team of scientists is assembled to investigate this world, exoethnologist Sara Callicot is recruited to keep an eye on an unstable crewmate.